A year later, Central Florida voters either love or fear Trump

One year after Donald Trump was elected, the Orlando Sentinel reached out to Central Floridians who spoke to us during the campaign to find out what they think about the first year of the Trump administration.

One year after Donald Trump was elected, the Orlando Sentinel reached out to Central Floridians who spoke to us during the campaign to find out what they think about the first year of the Trump administration.

A year after Donald Trump’s election, many of the president’s Central Florida supportersfrom 2016 remain vocal champions, a Hillary Clinton supporter says her fears were confirmed and a skeptical Republican is worried about his party’s future.

And theOrlando man who had a yard sign saying “Everybody sucks 2016” won’t reveal whom he voted for but says Trump is president and Americans have to support him.

“It was an ugly choice, but it was what it was, it is what it is,” Donn Carr said Wednesday. “We have three years to go.”

For some Trump supporters, personal approval of the president goes hand in hand with anger at the Republican Congress.

“I would take a bullet for him,” said Jeanne Eubanks of The Villages. “I love President Trump.”

“I came because I feel like my life's on the line,” said Eubanks, who had been to three Trump rallies already.

Now, Eubanks’ support of Trump has not swayed, and she lays the blame on Congress for struggles to pass legislation such as Obamacare repeal.

Winnie Gustafson of Eustis, who came to a 2016 Trump rally in Sanford “to send a message [because] we've been stepped on and disrespected by politicians for so many years,” said this week she has “no disappointments with his policies or behavior,” not even his often controversial tweets.

“I’ve never been so proud of a president,” she said. “He is doing what he said he would do.”

But she, too, is “very disappointed with the Congress.”

Jim Kohlmann of Apopka remains a fan of the president as well but has concerns.

“Among us Trump voters, there’s a high degree of confidence,” he said. “Some of the things he has to get done with legislative help, and he’s not getting much support there.”

But, he said, “If anything disappoints me, it’s that … he seems to be viscerally combative with people when he doesn’t need to be.”

He said the “classic example” of this is U.S. Sen. John McCain, who Trump said was “a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured.”

McCain was the decisive vote against repealing Obamacare in July.

“If John McCain did not have a personal animus because of the very serious slur directed toward him about his time in the military, he probably goes along with repealing Obamacare,” Kohlmann said. “It was completely unnecessary for Trump to engage him like that.”

Many Florida Republicans who once backed Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush for president have since reconciled themselves to Trump or become supporters. But Ben Newman, Rubio’s former Central Florida presidential chair, still does not support the president and says he’s lost friendships because of it.

“To me, this administration is going to have a negative impact on Republicans for the foreseeable future,” said Newman, an Orlando attorney. “At this point, the establishment party is committed, for better or worse, to Trump, and they have to live or die with that.”

Warning signs for the GOP include the strong Democratic showing in the Virginia election on Tuesday, as well as a Florida Atlantic University poll released Wednesday that found 41 percent of Floridians approve of Trump’s performance and 47 disapprove. Some national polls have Trump’s approval rating even lower.

One Clinton supporter said Trump has become the nightmare she expected.

Karen Manley of Winter Park was at a Clinton rally in Kissimmee last year with her partner of 21 years, Janet Thrane, saying she was voting “for my own rights.”

Now, she said, “the things I feared would happen have happened.”

The Trump administration has since argued in court that LGBT people aren’t protected under workplace discrimination laws.

But “that’s the least of my worries,” Manley said, pointing to Charlottesville, Va., in August, in which a woman was run over and killed, allegedly by a participant in a white nationalist rally.

She blamed Trump’s rhetoric for “allowing this anger, empowering people who are spiritually sick and want the oppression of others. … A lot more people are going to be hurt.”

But Carr,owner of the “Everybody sucks” sign, said, “whoever’s in office, as citizens of this country, it’s our duty to support that person.”

“And if you don’t like it, next time voting comes around, you can change presidents again,” Carr said with a shrug. “And the beat goes on.”

Karen Pence, Second Lady of the United States, visits the Integrative and Creative Arts Therapy program at the Florida Hospital Cancer Institute, in Orlando, Fla., Wednesday, February 21, 2018, working on an art project with cancer patients Julie Montz and Ann Bosco. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Karen Pence, Second Lady of the United States, visits the Integrative and Creative Arts Therapy program at the Florida Hospital Cancer Institute, in Orlando, Fla., Wednesday, February 21, 2018, working on an art project with cancer patients Julie Montz and Ann Bosco. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)